Know Thyself: Q&A with Revital U CEO Andy McWilliams

Q: How does being cloud-based give you an advantage over companies with large headquarter locations and lots of employees?
In the startup phase it’s a great way to control expenses since you are not putting money into infrastructure and things you don’t need like office space in the beginning. For us it was great way for us to get into the game and put our money where it belongs, which for us was marketing and communications.

Q: Why are having trusted suppliers essential to your success?
They are incredibly important to us. We don’t like the word “supplier” or “vendor” and prefer to call them “partners” because that’s what they are since we are outsourcing a big majority of our business to them. I’m a big believer in the “know thyself” principle. I know what parts of the business we excel at and where we don’t. And we went and found partners who are experts in those areas where we needed help.

Q: What is the number one factor in choosing partners for your business?
Trust is the number one factor. You are in business with them, they just don’t work for you.
And we know as much about their business as they do about ours. We have earned each other’s trust because they are in it with us. And that’s the difference between a partner and a vendor.

Q: Is there a risk of allowing partners to get too close?
When we were first starting the company, I had a little of that old legacy thinking. It was hard to let go and allow our partners access information to what we wanted to do. But what we found out is when you have a good business model, they can see your integrity and what you are trying to do and they know it will be a good thing for them as well.

Q: What are the weak spots that outsourcing alleviates?
I didn’t want to build a traditional company inside a network marketing company. I wanted to do what we do best. You can call that a weakness, but we think we are building a much stronger company for the long run by finding great partners we can plug into those areas we need and let them go to work.